The Koch Brothers Would Like For You To Think Of Them As Warren Buffett Now

Charles and David Koch want to be Warren Buffett, apparently. And who doesn't? But though they share some similarities with the investment icon, the Koch brothers don't stand a chance of becoming Buffett.

The reclusive Kochs recently invited a reporter from the Wall Street Journal (subscription only) to visit them at the Wichita, Kan., headquarters of Koch Industries, the multi-billion-dollar conglomerate their ultra-conservative father founded. Charles and David wanted to remind Wall Street that, just like Buffett, they too are grandfatherly Midwesterners with a metric crap-ton of cash to spend on companies, just in case anybody had forgotten!

The article quotes Steve Feilmeier, chief financial officer of Koch Industries, grumbling a bit about how some corporate sellers have approached Buffett alone to make deals, when the Kochs are just as capable as Buffett at buying and running companies. The author, James R. Hagerty, says the Koch Brothers "have long been overshadowed as deal-makers by their folksy neighbor in Omaha." Buffett did not respond to Hagerty's requests for comment.

This article is probably a sign the Kochs are tired of watching Buffett and his own conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway of Omaha, get first (and sometimes only) dibs whenever companies get that old familiar hankering to be purchased by grandfatherly billionaires. Surely that's what this story is all about, because obviously the Kochs cannot seriously expect to be considered Buffett-like in any significant respect.

In fact, in most of their other endeavors -- aside from that of building their father's company into a reported $100-billion-per year money machine, the second-biggest private company in the U.S. after Cargill -- they are the anti-Warren Buffetts, the Bizarro-World Buffetts.

Charles Koch tells the WSJ that he doesn't think his politics hurt his business, saying few people "live their lives by only a political dimension as opposed to, 'I like this product, it's really satisfying my needs.'"

And yet the Kochs seem to live entirely in a political dimension, one that makes even some on Wall Street blanch.